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III.

22.
We say that we shall see the Deity:
What is't to see? The palpitating light
Throbs with soft undulations on the eye,
Painting its fleeting pictures on the sight;
Whence to the brain the tremulous nerves convey
The cypher'd message sent by every eloquent ray.

23.
When then we say that we shall see in heaven,
What mean we by the phrase? When human sight
Is but a name to earthly organs given,
Whose functions act but in material light.
If lights' vibrations cease, or dull decay
Impair the brain or eye, sight vanishes away.

24.
But is sense aught than the mechanic mean
By which the mind is brought in harmony
With its material home—a bridge between
The soul and earthly forms which round it lie?
If so, may not the soul see, feel, and hear,
Responsive to appeals beyond the senses' sphere?

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25.
Unconscious as th' optician's lens, the eye
By changeless law its changing pictures makes:
The ear knows nothing of the melody
Some like-unconscious instrument awakes:
These are but links in the material chain
Of forces, which evoke vibrations in the brain.

26.
The consciousness of what we hear or see
In our material organs cannot lie;
These might fulfil their functions, and yet we
Remain unconscious of their agency:
Some immaterial power must have wrought
To change material motion to perceptive thought.

27.
Or shall we with some scientists believe
These brain-vibrations the sole motive cause
Of thought and action, which unaided weave
The infinitely vast and complex, course
Of human life—man an automaton,—
His consciousness a casual phenomenon?

28.
If by a reas'ning process we arrive
At this result—that mind is impotent,
Can but perceive, and helplessly connive
At ends it can nor further nor prevent—
Why trust the reason, when itself has taught
That it disowns the power of independent thought?

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29.
Why, as to true or false, should men dispute
If thought is but to brain-vibration due;
And natural forces in one mind dispute
What in another they assert as true;
Eight, wrong, true, false, phrases which but express
Diverse arrangements of material substances?

30.
On truths inherent in our minds, we rest
As the firm base from which all reas'ning springs,
Coincidence with which affords the test
Of truth or error in our reasonings,
Does not the act of reasoning imply
The conscious pow'r to choose 'twixt truth and fallacy?

31.
That mind is free—allied to, not enslav'd
By the material form in which it dwells,
Now lording it as master, now deprav'd
By influence 'gainst which it still rebels—
Of these two motive powers the ceaseless strife
Is the deep mystery of every human life.

32.
By some mysterious law these forces twain
In all resultant action arc combined,
As tho' the palpitations of the brain
Were merged in action in a stream of mind;
As natural substances new forms acquire
When subject to th' electric current's hidden fire,